Mike Johnson

so ive been trying to get Winlink running for a few weeks now and i finally got Winlink Express installed and connected to a couple of gateways but the connection keeps dropping mid-transfer and i cant figure out if its my setup or the gateway itself. im running a IC-7300 into a Signalink USB, using Vara HF which i bought the license for. the connection will start fine, ill see the handshake go through and start pulling down messages then somewhere around 60-70% of the transfer it just dies. the gateway shows busy or drops off the list entirely. ive tried a few different gateways, some closer some further away, and same thing happens on most of them. one gateway i connected to in texas (im in the midwest) actually completed a full session which was great, but then i tried it again the next day and it dropped again. im wondering if my audio levels are off or if theres something wrong with how im configuring the soundcard. the Signalink tuning is something i never fully understood honestly. also not sure if i should be running Vara FM instead for local stuff since theres a few VHF gateways maybe 40 miles away. any ideas would be helpful, this has been bugging me for a while and i want to get it reliable before our ARES group starts using it for emcomm exercises

so ive been running single op for years and my rate kind of plateaus around 80-90 qsos/hr during the busy parts of sweepstakes and i keep watching the top scores and wondering how much of that gap is just SO2R vs skill vs whatever else. ive got a second radio sitting in the shack that i mostly use for monitoring and i started thinking about actually wiring it up properly for SO2R before november. the antenna switching is the part thats making my head hurt. right now im running a 3 element yagi on 20 and a dipole situation on 40 and i dont really have great isolation between the two feedlines. i know you need serious filtering to make it work otherwise youre just blasting your own ears and front end every time you transmit on radio 1. the ICE or Array Solutions bandpass filters seem to be the standard answer but man the cost adds up fast when you start stacking them. my actual question i guess is whether anyone went from single op to SO2R and actually saw a meaningful rate improvement first time out, or does it take a full contest season to get the operating technique dialed in enough to matter. im not trying to win anything just want to squeeze more out of the time i have to operate.

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, mostly because a friend of mine has been into it and it seems really cool but also kind of overwhelming? i dont even really know what the difference is between the license levels or whatever. i looked up some stuff online and saw there was a technician and general and extra but i dont understand if you need to do them in order or if i can just skip to the one that lets me talk farther distances or whatever also is the test hard? im not super technical, i passed basic electronics in school like 10 years ago but i definitely dont remember most of it. does anyone have good study resources? i saw the arrl has a book but i also saw some websites. just not sure where to start honestly

So ive been chasing SOTA for about 8 months now and finally decided to stop being lazy and actually get up on a summit myself. Planning to activate W6/SC-305 this Saturday, nothing crazy difficult but its a decent hike with the gear. My setup is gonna be a KX2 with a 40m EFHW thrown over a branch or trekking pole, and im bringing a 3Ah lipo since the full 6Ah feels like too much weight for the climb. Hoping to get on 40 and maybe 20 if conditions cooperate. My actual question is about the reference logging on SOTA watch. Do I need to post an alert before the activation or can I just self-spot once im up there? I know alerts are kind of a curtesy thing but wasnt sure if they're required for the activation to count. Also curious if 4 QSOs is still the minimum to qualify or if that changed at any point. I feel like I read conflicting things. Any tips from people who've done a bunch of these would be appreciated, especially around pacing yourself when you're carrying radio gear cause I tend to overpack.

honestly same boat as you were a few months ago lol. what helped me was just downloading the actual ARRL band plan as a pdf and keeping it next to the radio. after a few weeks of checking it before every QSO i just kind of memorized it without trying. the part 97 document itself is kind of a beast to read straight through

honestly the extra sub-bands matter a lot more during contests than casual operating. if you ever get into contesting seriously youll notice real fast that the extra portion of 20m or 40m is where everyone is running stations and calling CQ, generals are kind of stuck listening to a pile of activity they cant transmit in. that alone was enough reason for me. as for the theory stuff, yeah some of it is genuinely hard, the filter stuff and the transmission line calculations took me a few weeks of actual studying to wrap my head around. but i will say knowing that material made me a better troubleshooter when weird things started happening with my antenna setup. so its not totally useless knowledge even if you never design a bandpass filter from scratch in your life. just depends how deep into the hobby you want to go i guess.

maybe its just me but 40m feels like a ghost town most evenings now. i used to sit down after dinner, tune around and always find something going on — nets, ragchews, whatever. lately its just a wall of noise or nothing at all. checked my antenna and everything looks fine so its not that. just wondering if other people are noticing the same thing or if im in some weird dead spot

I picked a local state park about 45 minutes from home that I knew would be mostly empty on a cold February weekday. The temperature was hovering around 28 degrees, but I figured that would just make it more authentic, right? Famous last words. The Setup My portable kit is pretty basic - a 20-watt QRP transceiver, a 29-foot end-fed half wave antenna, and a small 7Ah sealed lead acid battery. I also brought along a folding table, a camp chair, and what I thought was adequate cold weather gear. The antenna support was going to be a 20-foot telescoping fiberglass pole that I'd been wanting to test out. Getting to the park was easy enough, and I found a nice spot near the picnic area with some trees for antenna support. That's when reality started setting in. First lesson learned: those little plastic clips that come with telescoping poles? They don't work so well when your fingers are numb from the cold. I spent about 15 minutes fumbling around trying to get the sections locked in place while wearing gloves. The antenna went up easier than expected once I got the pole situation sorted out. I tied off one end to a picnic table and used the pole to get the other end up about 18 feet. Not perfect, but it looked reasonable. The counterpoise wires just laid on the frozen ground. First Contact Jitters Once everything was connected and I'd done a quick SWR check (thankfully it was under 2:1 across 20 meters), it was time to try making some contacts. I tuned around 20 meters looking for a good frequency and found a quiet spot around 14.255. Then came the moment of truth - calling CQ for the first time in the field. "CQ Parks on the Air, CQ POTA" felt strange coming out of my mouth, but within about 30 seconds I had my first response. A station from Tennessee came back to me with a solid 5-7 signal report. I was so excited I nearly fumbled the exchange, but managed to get his info logged properly. One down, nine to go for a valid activation. The next hour was a blur of contacts. I worked stations from all over the east coast and even got a few from the midwest. The little QRP rig was performing better than I expected, and most stations were giving me solid copy reports. I was starting to feel pretty confident about this whole POTA thing. When Things Go Sideways About 90 minutes in, just as I was working my 12th contact, disaster struck. A gust of wind caught the antenna pole and sent it crashing down. The antenna wire got tangled in some nearby bushes, and I could see one of the connector crimps had pulled loose. This is where being prepared really matters, and honestly, I wasn't as ready as I thought. I had brought a small toolkit, but trying to re-crimp a PL-259 connector in near-freezing weather with numb fingers turned out to be way harder than doing it comfortably at my home workbench. It took me about 20 minutes to get everything sorted out and the antenna back up. During that time, I learned another valuable lesson: bring backup connectors and maybe even a backup antenna. Several stations had been calling me when the antenna went down, and I felt bad about just disappearing from the frequency. Wrapping Up Despite the antenna mishap, I managed to log 18 contacts total before packing up. My hands were getting too cold to write legibly in my logbook, and the battery was starting to show signs of the cold affecting its capacity. The voltage had dropped from 12.8 to about 11.9 volts, and I could tell the transmitter wasn't quite as punchy as it had been earlier. The drive home gave me plenty of time to think about what went well and what I'd do differently next time. The QRP transceiver performed great, and the end-fed antenna worked better than I expected for being so close to the ground. But I definitely need to invest in better cold weather gear and maybe bring some hand warmers. Lessons for Next Time First, dress warmer than you think you need to. What feels comfortable for a quick walk to the mailbox gets pretty miserable after sitting still for two hours. I'm thinking about getting one of those propane heaters that ice fishermen use. Second, have backup plans for everything. Extra connectors, maybe a simple wire dipole as a backup antenna, and definitely more than one way to support the antenna. I'm considering getting some of those heavy-duty tent stakes to guy the pole down better. Third, practice the setup at home first. I thought I knew my equipment pretty well, but there's something about being in the field that makes everything take longer than expected. Next time I'll time myself setting up in the backyard a few times before heading out. Finally, invest in a better logging system. Writing in a paper logbook with cold fingers was not ideal. I'm thinking about trying one of the phone apps that can handle POTA logging, or at least getting a clipboard and some pre-printed log sheets. All in all, it was a great experience despite the challenges. There's something really satisfying about making contacts from a park bench in the middle of nowhere with just a small radio and some wire. I'm already planning my next activation for a warmer day! Anyone else have stories from their first POTA activation? I'd love to hear about other people's learning experiences in the comments.

yeah what he said about the baofeng menu is spot on, i spent like two weeks wondering why a repeater wasnt responding to me and it turned out i had the tone set to decode only lol. chirp software actually makes it way easier to program those radios if you haven't tried it yet, you can see all the tone settings in one spreadsheet view and its harder to mess up.

the 7300 EQ is actually pretty useful once you dig into it. what i'd do first though is forget the compressor for now and just get the mic gain set right — you want that ALC meter barely moving into the ALC zone, like just kissing it on peaks. a lot of guys crank the mic gain way up thinking louder is better and then the compressor makes it worse. get the gain staging right first then revisit compression. also the PR-40 is a dynamic and has a pretty flat response which is great but on SSB you generally want to boost a bit in the 2k-3k range where voice intelligibility lives. the 7300 has a TX tone control in the menu, i think its under set > tone — play with rolling off below like 300hz and bumping the midrange a little. makes a big difference on how you cut through on a crowded band. and yeah, mic positioning matters too, you want to be talking across the mic not directly into it with a dynamic like that

Narrowed down my study options to three main resources but can't decide which approach to take: HamStudy.org - free flashcards and practice testsHam Radio Prep - paid course with video explanationsARRL License Manual - traditional textbook approachHas anyone used multiple approaches? Looking for real experiences on what actually helped you understand the material vs just memorize answers. Want to actually learn, not just pass the test.

I started with a UV-5R and honestly, the programming frustration nearly killed my enthusiasm for the hobby. Went with an FT-60R afterward and wished I'd started there. Spend a bit more upfront and get something user-friendly - the FT-65R is perfect for this.